Retail FX and CFD trading activity continued to expand in the first quarter of 2026. Five separate brokers in FM Intelligence report show monthly trading volumes above $1.5 trillion, and for the first time on records, the top-ranked broker in the cohort crossed the $2 trillion mark.
A Larger Active Client Base
Active client accounts across the brokers covered by the FM Intelligence reached 7.42 million by the end of Q1 2026, up 9.4% from 6.78 million in Q4 2025 and up 42.4% from 5.21 million in Q1 2025.
Account totals across the cohort have risen in each of the last four quarters, continuing the multi-year trend captured in the recent comparison of Q4 2021 against Q4 2025, in which active accounts had already doubled across the named-broker tracker.
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The expansion of the active account base has run alongside the growth in trading volumes, though account counts and trading volumes do not move in lockstep. Several brokers in the top tier of the volume ranking sit outside the top tier of the account ranking, and the reverse also holds, reflecting different client mixes and average trade sizes across the industry.
Volumes Roughly Double Year-Over-Year
Aggregate monthly trading volumes rose roughly 13% quarter-over-quarter in the headline industry total reported by FM Intelligence.
Within the named-broker cohort tracked individually, monthly volumes are running roughly twice their Q1 2025 levels a year ago. The pace continues a multi-year acceleration: the Retail Intensity Ratio framework introduced earlier this year showed retail CFD daily turnover rising from 2.7% of BIS-reported global FX volume in Q4 2020 to 14.1% by Q4 2025.
What's in the Full Q1 2026 Analysis
The Q1 2026 retail volumes analysis on the FM Intelligence DataLab Portal covers the full broker-by-broker volume ranking with quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year change for every tracked firm, the active accounts ranking, average monthly volume per account, MT4 and MT5 platform share trends across four quarters, and the underlying methodology and cohort definitions.
Auxiliary metrics covering mobile versus desktop volume share, the most-traded instrument categories, and the FX versus non-FX volume mix are also included.
Read the full Q1 2026 retail volumes analysis on the FM Intelligence DataLab Portal →
